Richard Ford - Rock Springs

I had been going mornings in those days, when the Today show got over. Just to kill an hour. The river runs through the middle of town, and I could walk over in five minutes and fish downstream below the motels that are there, and could look up at the blue and white mountains up the Bitterroot, toward my mother’s house, and sometimes see the geese coming back up their flyway. It was a strange winter. January was like a spring day, and the Chinook blew down over us a warm wind from the eastern slopes. Some days were cool or cold, but many days were warm, and the only ice you’d see was in the lows where the sun didn’t reach. You could walk right out to the river and make a long cast to where the fish were deep down in the cold pools. And you could even think things might turn out better.

Nola turned and looked at me. The thought of fishing was seeming like a joke to her, I know. Though maybe she didn’t have money for a meal and thought we might buy her one. Or maybe she’d never even been fishing. Or maybe she knew that she was on her way to the bottom, where everything is the same, and here was this something different being offered, and it was worth a try.

“Did you catch a big fish, Les,” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“See?” Troy said. “Am I a liar? Or am I not?”

“You might be.” Nola looked at me oddly then, but I thought sweetly, too. “What kind of fish was it?”

“A brown trout. Caught deep, on a hare’s ear,” I said.

“I don’t know what that is,” Nola said and smiled. I could see that she wasn’t minding any of this because her face was flushed, and she looked pretty.

“Which,” I asked. “A brown trout? Or a hare’s ear?”

“That’s it,” she said.

“A hare’s ear is a kind of fly,” I said.

“I see,” Nola said.

“Let’s get out of the bar for once,” Troy said loudly, running his chair backwards and forwards. “We’ll go fish, then we’ll have chicken-in-the-ruff. Troy’s paying.”

“What’ll I lose?” Nola said and shook her head. She looked at both of us, smiling as though she could think of something that might be lost.

“You got it all to win,” Troy said. “Let’s go.”

“Whatever,” Nola said. “Sure.”

And we went out of the Top Hat, with Nola pushing Troy in his chair and me coming on behind.

On Front Street the evening was as warm as May, though the sun had gone behind the peaks already, and it was nearly dark. The sky was deep blue in the east behind the Sapphires, where the darkness was, but salmon pink above the sun. And we were in the middle of it. Half-drunk, trying to be imaginative in how we killed our time.

Troy’s Checker was parked in front, and Troy rolled over to it and spun around.

“Let me show you this great trick,” he said and grinned. “Get in and drive, Les. Stay there, sweetheart, and watch me.”

Nola had kept her drink in her hand, and she stood by the door of the Top Hat. Troy lifted himself off his chair onto the concrete. I got in beside Troy’s bars and his raised seat, and started the cab with my left hand.

“Ready,” Troy shouted. “Ease forward. Ease up.”

And I eased the car up.

“Oh my God,” I heard Nola say and saw her put her palm to her forehead and look away.

“ Yaah. Ya-hah, ” Troy yelled.

“Your poor foot,” Nola said.

“It doesn’t hurt me,” Troy yelled. “It’s just like a pressure.” I couldn’t see him from where I was.

“Now I know I’ve seen it all,” Nola said. She was smiling.

“Back up, Les. Just ease it back again,” Troy called out.

“Don’t do it again,” Nola said.

“One time’s enough, Troy,” I said. No one else was in the street. I thought how odd it would be for anyone to see that, without knowing something in advance. A man running over another man’s foot for fun. Just drunks, you’d think, and be right.

“Sure. Okay,” Troy said. I still couldn’t see him. But I put the cab back in park and waited. “Help me, sweetheart, now,” I heard Troy say to Nola. “It’s easy getting down, but old Troy can’t get up again by himself. You have to help him.”

And Nola looked at me in the cab, the glass still in her hand. It was a peculiar look she gave me, a look that seemed to ask something of me, but I did not know what it was and couldn’t answer. And then she put her glass on the pavement and went to put Troy back in his chair.

When we got to the river it was as good as dark, and the river was only a big space you could hear, with the south-of-town lights up behind it and the three bridges and Champion’s Paper downstream a mile. And it was cold with the sun gone, and I thought there would be fog in before morning.

Troy had insisted on driving with us in the back, as if we’d hired a cab to take us fishing. On the way down he sang a smoke jumper’s song, and Nola sat close to me and let her leg be beside mine. And by the time we stopped by the river, below the Lion’s Head motel, I had kissed her twice, and knew all that I could do.

“I think I’ll go fishing,” Troy said from his little raised-up seat in front. “I’m going night fishing. And I’m going to get my own chair out and my rod and all I need. I’ll have a time.”

“How do you ever change a tire?” Nola said. She was not moving. It was just a question she had. People say all kinds of things to cripples.

Troy whipped around suddenly, though, and looked back at us where we sat on the cab seat. I had put my arm around Nola, and we sat there looking at his big head and big shoulders, below which there was only half a body any good to anyone. “Trust Mr. Wheels,” Troy said. “Mr. Wheels can do anything a whole man can.” And he smiled at us a crazy man’s smile.

“I think I’ll just stay in the car,” Nola said. “I’ll wait for chicken-in-the-ruff. That’ll be my fishing.”

“It’s too cold for ladies now anyway,” Troy said gruffly. “Only men. Only men in wheelchairs is the new rule.”

I got out of the cab with Troy then and set up his chair and put him in it. I got his fishing gear out of the trunk and strung it up. Troy was not a man to fish flies, and I put a silver dace on his spin line and told him to hurl it far out and let it flow for a time into the deep current and then to work it, and work it all the way in. I said he would catch a fish with that strategy in five minutes, or ten.

“Les,” Troy said to me in the cold dark behind the cab.

“What?” I said.

“Do you ever just think of just doing a criminal thing sometime? Just do something terrible. Change everything.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think about that.”

Troy had his fishing rod across his chair now, and he was gripping it and looking down the sandy bank toward the dark and sparkling water.

“Why don’t you do it?” he said.

“I don’t know what I’d choose to do,” I said.

“Mayhem,” Troy said. “Commit mayhem.”

“And go to Deer Lodge forever,” I said. “Or maybe they’d hang me and let me dangle. That would be worse than this.”

“Okay, that’s right,” Troy said, still staring. “But I should do it, shouldn’t I? I should do the worst thing there is.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” I said.

And then he laughed. “Hah. Right. Never do that,” he said. And he wheeled himself down toward the river into the darkness, laughing all the way.

In the cold cab, after that, I held Nola Foster for a long time. Just held her with my arms around her, breathing and waiting. From the back window I could see the Lion’s Head motel, see the restaurant there that faces the river and that is lighted with candles, and where people were eating. I could see the welcome out front, though not who was welcomed. I could see cars on the bridge going home for the night. And it made me think of Harley Reeves in my father’s little house on the Bitterroot. I thought about him in bed with my mother. Warm. I thought about the faded old tattoo on Harley’s shoulder, victory, that said. And I could not connect it easily with what I knew about Harley Reeves, though I thought possibly that he had won a victory of kinds over me just by being where he was.